On this Saint Andrew‘s Day in Scotland, here are some stories you might want to catch around the Web for November 30. If you have a story to be featured, let me know via @michael_levy on Twitter or via the Britannica Facebook page, where we encourage you to like us.

Forget Tea. Latino leaders, frustrating with the Democrats for their “inaction on immigration reform” and that they are considered an “afterthought” by Democratic leaders, are discussing the idea of forming an independent, grass-roots movement, says the Las Vegas Sun‘s Delen Goldberg. Dubbed the “Tequila Party” and modeled on the Tea Party movement, the idea has “exploded,” says Fernando Romero. Perhaps, but since the Tea Party was first, will the early bird get this worm?

The Falling Cost of TARP

Two years ago, to prop up the country’s failing financial institutions, the U.S. Congress enacted the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which authorized the Department of the Treasury to invest up to $700 billion by buying unproductive real-estate investments or even becoming part owners of banks by purchasing financial company stock. (The disbursements eventually came to just under $400 billion.) At the time, many conservative criticized this bailout as a waste of taxpayers money, and some Republicans, such as Bob Bennett of Utah, lost their seats as a result of their vote. But now that investment doesn’t look so extraordinary, as the Congressional Budget Office reduced its estimate of the subsidy to only $25 billion, down from $66 billion in August. Says Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post, the total is roughly “the equivalent of less than six months of emergency jobless benefits.”

The Top Global Thinkers

Foreign Policy is out with its list of the top 100 thinkers, and topping the list this year are Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (who are jointly at #1). Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Robert Zoellick, of the IMF and World Bank, came in at #2, while Barack Obama was #3. Last year’s #1, Ben Bernanke, chair of the Fed, dropped to #5 this year. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was the top-ranked woman, coming in at #10, and Hillary and Bill Clinton tied for #13. Making the top 20 were two Chinese citizens, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank, and Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. One of the comments, by “Ethekyaa,” sums up many of the criticisms of the list: “As usual, FP’s list of 100 Global Thinkers is just a list of global leftist thinkers with a few neo-liberals and Muslims thrown in there for diversity.” Nevertheless, lots of interesting people to check out here.

It looks like bullying is not just a human problem, reports the New Scientist‘s Michael Marshall. Researchers at UCLA have examined yellow-bellied marmots in the Rockies and found that, far from being the cutie pies we often view them as, they “do not cooperate in the way that many primates and other highly social animals do.” Indeed, their “interactions are nasty,” says lead researcher Daniel Blumstein. According to the research some “low-ranking marmots might evolve to cope with being victimised, because it’s better than being eaten.”

The Owner of the Sun

The Independent reports that Angeles Duran, a 49-year-old woman from the Spanish region of Galicia has claimed ownership over the Sun, registering “the star at a local notary public as being her property.” According to Duran, “There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law. I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first.” I was surprised, since I laid claim last year to the Milky Way and always assumed that the Sun was covered under my title.